Forgive me if this has been covered before, but all I can seem to find on the subject is just the loading time of the program, and I'm not interested in speaking about that.

The quick and dirty is, I just discovered that Poser 5 was the reason that XP was taking almost twice as long to boot. I'm running XP Pro SP1 and I usually get 1.5 passes of the little green bar before I get the login screen, and while I had Poser 5 installed, it was taking 4 passes.

I had just installed Poser 5 the other night on this computer, as well as Photoshop 7, and after removing them one at a time, determined that Poser 5 was the source of my boot time pain.

My only guess was it was the really, really bad copy protection since I can't think of any other reason why it'd delay booting. And yes, I patched it to SR4.1 for all the good it apparently did.

Is this a well-known and documented problem?

Tomorrow I'm going to copy over my already installed copy from my other machine and see if I still get the same boot delay. I'm guessing I won't, but we'll see. I imagine if I were to remove it from my other machine that it'd boot considerably faster as well.

Comments/questions/etc are welcome.

Do you have any "optimization" tools running on your system that try to pre-cache things? Backup software? Virus scanner? Do you have indexing activated for NTFS? Does the extended boot time still exist after serveral successive reboots? Because there's nothing in P5 SR4.1 that runs until you explicitly launch the program. The initial copy protection was removed with SR1. All that SR4.1 has are a few registry keys, and even those aren't vital and do nothing whatsoever at boot time. My guess is that some part of your system is scanning the P5 directory during bootup, and especially the runtime folder has lots of files in it.

Attached Link: http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=664

There is nothing in Poser that is involved with your system boot. My best guess is, you have something scanning your system at startup....antivirus,antispyware,etc,that is looking in all those folders. But to see what's really going on,DL BootVis at this link. It's a very small (free) utility developed by Microsoft (but hosted by everybody on the net),that will give you a complete report of everything that is going on during your boot. SWAMP

I am running xp pro too and poser 5 does not affect the booting of the computer in any way.

The copy protection can cause these sorts of problems, although it doesn't for everyone. As Stewer says it was removed in SR4.1 (in fact any SR > 2.1). But you can still install the copy protection "inadvertently" if you start Poser 5 - particularly an old copy of P5 - BEFORE you apply the SR. The copy protection scheme is executed when you first start P5, so apply SR4.1 first after installing P5, then start Poser 5, and all should be well. If you have already got Interlok code running on your system, then you'll need to scan the Web for instructions on how to remove. (There were some here on Renderosity, but Pace have removed some of the tools used in that method used.)

That could be right, when I installed poser 5 I installed the service release 4 before even running poser 5.

I rencently upgraded comps and tested boot time with and without Poser and a few other 3d/2d apps on XP Home. None of them caused a change in boot time.

Since people asked, no, this machine has nothing running. In fact, I have taken the time to disable everything I can that uses cpu time. Heck, check the process list at startup and you'll see 15 items. I'm very anal about this.

I didn't get into the very nitty gritty before of how I know it's Poser 5, but it's quite obvious: I didn't install anything but PS7 and P5 before I noticed an increase in boot time. Removing PS7 had no effect, but removing P5 did. I, in fact, installed an anti-virus program before removing those, and it now boots just as fast as it used to, despite there being an anti-virus prorgram installed (for the curious, I have no viruses, and had no viruses, hence why I never had any anti-virus software installed. I'm anal, I know what gets installed on my machine, and I knew I had nothing to fear, but I figured I'd cover all bases anyway. I also have it disabled. Yes, I'm confident I won't get a virus. You decide if it's arrogant or stupid. ;)).

The only thing I can figure is maybe I tried to run P5 before installing SR4, but I'm fairly positive I installed and then immediately patched. I have no desire to use P5 in its initial form, but I've been fine with it since SR3.

I can't explain why what happened, well, happened. I'm just telling you what happened.

Oh, also, if something was scanning the runtime at boot, it'd choke on my P4 runtime long before P5's. I install P5 as just the program. I don't use any of its content except the dynamic items. P4, on the other hand, has a monstrous runtime. Gah, out of hand, really.

Sometimes I assume things when I shouldn't. When I said there is nothing in Poser that runs at boot time...I "assumed" you installed the 4.1 patch before starting Poser. If you didn't you "could" have all that Interlock crap running at start-up (even if it is not effecting Poser). Actually you won't know for sure untill you run a program that logs everything that goes on during your boot time....otherwise it's just a guessing game.

I can understand that you don't want to trust my memory. Perfectly understandable. So allow me to put to rest any doubts:

I just reinstalled Poser 5. I did a minimal installation, meaning just the Poser 5 content. I didn't do the runtime or anything else. I promptly installed SR4.1 (it claims to be 4, but that shouldn't matter if it the copy protection was removed in 4, or 3, whichever) without rebooting. I immediately started a trace with bootvis and rebooted.

I was greeted by 4.25 passes of the blue bar (I said green before, and I'm sorry, but I did get the colors wrong).

Now, since typing the last paragraph, I've removed P5 and run another trace, and guess what? It booted like normal. Of note: I did not run the program between installing and removing.

Comparing the traces, I can see "imountsrv.exe" being loaded when P5 was installed, along with "pmounter.exe". A google search says prmounter.exe is a Paragon Hard Disk Manager file (which I have installed), but curiously, this process is not started now that Poser 5 is removed.

Further more, imountsrv is not run now that P5 is gone. A google search turns up one item that is merely a list of processes without any description of them (you have to search for imountsrv, not imountsrv.exe). Also, standard system processes at boot start anywhere from 7 to 10 seconds faster without Poser 5 installed than with.

I'm not sure what else I can offer at this point. I know my system, and I know what I'm seeing based on logs and experience. There's definitely something going on there, but I'm not entirely sure what it is.

I'm not trying to stir any pots or start anything, but I think it's worth the time to consider my experiences and logs here. I think it's possible CL forgot to remove something. Edited: because I can't type.

Message edited on: 09/13/2004 23:55

I wasn't douting your memory at all.... I was just clarifyin what I had said about nothing in Poser that runs at boot time. I didn't get Poser5 untill sr2 came out,and never ran it unpatched. So I really don't know if all that activation crap runs at boot time or not,in the unpatched version. SWAMP

imountsrv = installation runtime file (incorporated into Windows Installer). No offense, but you haven't eliminated other changes to your system as possible culprits. Your logic chain is not flawed, just your perception of what has happened. You might (might) defrag your drive using the windows defragmenter, not the 3rd party utility. In over 30 various installations of Poser 5 (usually for testing different things to see if they work or not, lol), I have never seen an increase in Windows boot time. However Photoshop adds several driver files to the system in support of the color management structures that are in use by it, and they will load at boot until and unless they are specifically shut down -- and removal of Photoshop does not necessarily include removal of these drivers (software drivers, not hardware). Other possible affectors: File system in use additional fonts Service settings on Manual for windows installer Note that in order for a program to affect the start of a system at boot, it must have something that runs at boot time. Poser (any version) does not. So, as simply as possible, it cannot be the cause in and of itself. Also, as a final note: the bitmap that runs and is your timing point is not a timed sequence, and can be affected by a host of hardware factors, as well as software ones.

Well, considering he didn't change anything other than installing Poser, I would say he did eliminate other possible culprits. It's pretty simple really: Boot takes x seconds - Install Poser Boot takes y seconds - Remove Poser Boot takes x seconds If poser doesnt have any affect on boot, then x should equal y. However, if i recall correctly, Poser does require a reboot after install to complete its setup. Right? Therefore, the only way to truely see if Poser increased boot time would be to perform two reboots - one to complete the setup, and another to check the time your system takes to boot up.

Except that it isn't that simple. Any program you add to Windows will raise the spectre of cross linkages in the registry. It isn't -supposed- to happen....but it does. There is also the possibility of dead COM linkages there that are being invoked. The fact that -removal- of P5 seems to somehow have disabled utterly unrelated OS maintenance software suggests to me that there is Evil Afoot in Registry Land (and the reboot was for the benefit of Interlok, not the actual P5 program, IIRC) whoopdat, have you run a registry cleaner lately, just to check for reg rubbish? And search your C: for interlok.exe; P5 1.0 installs it, and unless you deliberately removed it, it remained when you uninstalled it. Interlok is a commercial product that other apps use, and P5 couldn't uninstall it without breaking other applications.

Some quick thoughts to other posts, and not necessarily in the order they were posted: I do see imountsrv running now, so I obviously saw that one wrong. If it is indeed linked to the Windows installer, then no big deal. However, I don't see it on Black Viper's list, so, I'll go with what you said. Cool. Also, it's on auto, so it's not that (as you said it being on manual could be a problem), if that indeed could be a problem. However, outside of formatting and reinstalling Windows, installing Poser 5 and patching, rebooting, removing it, and rebooting, I couldn't do this test in a more controlled environment. I'll grant that there may just be some conflict somewhere between something (Windows? another program?) and Poser, and not necessarily the copy protection, but you can't ignore that the only time the symptoms are there is when Poser 5 is installed. As soon as it's removed, all symptoms vanish. That is very black and white. No other program or game has had this effect. I mentioned installing and removing Photoshop (as well as those things it leaves behind) had no effect. I've checked fonts, and there's been no new fonts installed since uh, well, when I installed Windows. I've been in font hell before, and I'm not there now. I considered the possibility that P5 just bloats the registry, but I haven't gotten around to seeing exactly how much it puts in the registry, especially since some of it can be a pain to track down. I considered running a registry cleaner as well, but I just haven't gotten that far yet. I rebooted only once because I wanted to "avoid" having interlok run, if it indeed was the case. I wanted to update Poser so that it wouldn't be there. Well, I've searched both drives and don't see the file, so that at least looks right. I've considered reinstalling, rebooting, patching and again rebooting, to see if it's any different, but I think next on the list is copying over a pre-installed copy. I'm not sure what to expect, but it will be interesting to see. Again, I don't have the answers, just saying what's happening. I'm trying to figure it out as time permits.

Try this: 1. install Poser 2. create a copy of the Poser directory 3. deinstall Poser Do the symptoms still exist? If not, just use that copy of the Poser directory and stop worrying.

stewer, I was planning on doing something like that. May do that a little later, actually. No worrying here, just curiosity. :)

In case anyone is still paying attention to this thread, I got around to just copying Poser 5 over.

Everything is nice and snappy right now. My belief is that the registry entries (and more specifically, I'm guessing file/extension entriess) are the culprit. Considering my Poser 4 is not installed but is copied over in a similar manner, I have no Poser registry entries. Which makes me hazard a guess that people could get rid of all Poser related registry entries and see a performance increase.

I am not suggesting anyone do that. Your problem if you do, but it'd be an interesting experiment for those brave enough to see.

So, in the end, I think the blame falls on Microsoft here. Registry bloating is primarily Windows's fault for their code, though it doesn't help when every program puts in a billion entries. Then again, I may be completely off base on my guess, but my system is better for not having installed either program. Gotta love programs that work without registry entries.

It is probably more a windows fault than anything to do with poser. I dont understand why someone doesnt write a better, more efficient and faster alternative to windows, they could make billions out of it.